


now cracks a noble heart

by darkcomedylateshow



Series: didn't you like it better when... [1]
Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M, Power Dynamics, the talented mr. greg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-01-02 21:36:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21168245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkcomedylateshow/pseuds/darkcomedylateshow
Summary: “Greg, you’re being too fucking polite for your own good,” Tom says, throwing back the last of his wine. “Say something mean right now.”“Like what?”“Don’t get distracted, finish your thought. Try saying what you’re really thinking.”“I don’t—““Fine, I’ll do it for you. ‘Oh, I’m Greg, uh, I hate capitalism but actively participate in it, oh, God, Logan Roy is my real dad. Oh, God. Kiss me, Tom.’”“Okay—““‘Oh God, Tom, take me home.’ Okay, seriously, I’m getting the bill.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also, a contempt for humanity, an inability to love and be loved, insatiable ambition — and talent. We deserve each other." —Addison DeWitt, _All About Eve_

Tom hates this. 

Mostly it’s Greg’s fault, because he can’t really place Greg, can’t figure out exactly what it is he wants. Is he gay? Is he just stupid? Does he like the attention? 

It’s like fucking a brick wall. Or watching a comedian who never breaks character, never bends to self-awareness, never lightens up on the joke. Why the fuck did Greg follow him around to begin with? Does he like his total lack of control? Or is he in on the joke — is Greg punishing him by indulging him? It feels like that. 

Greg is always effusively, brittlely polite before and after. Whenever they’re done, Tom feels like banging his head in the stairwell of Greg’s big, stupid loft, or slamming his hand in a car door, but he usually just smiles and pats Greg on the back too hard and leaves. 

Then he stumbles home around one in the morning, rouses around seven, and passes the empty hours at work on his computer. When he’s not managing a crush of emails, Tom skims the news, checks Twitter since Roman isn’t allowed on anymore, then looks at his bank account, with a childlike mix of eagerness and terror each time. 

The meal of ortolan and overpriced vintage with Greg shows up on his AmEx statement and he writes it off as a business expense. Sure, he got the idea from Billions, but what the fuck — it was like tasting the Roman Empire, grapes and tender game and songbird guts soaked in armagnac down his throat. But the best part of eating in New York was seeing, and being seen — the hedge-fund managers and their young wives; aging billionaires and their bored-looking children, the mothers decked out in diamonds and Prada and acrylic nails on their long, knobby fingers, upwards of a million dollars on their backs alone, easy, even more counting the Botox. 

Sometimes people looked at Tom, hopefully not sneering, hopefully admiring his tie, his haircut, his cufflinks, his good posture. He was almost unplaceable to the common eye, beyond some douche in a suit they’d seen on MSNBC. And then there was Greg across from him in a blazer that looked like it was from Macy's, flushed from the wine, looking slightly ill. Tom would always notice he was beautiful, but the way a wild animal caught in your headlights was beautiful. Then he’d feel mildly disgusted.

Maybe he should go back to Minnesota. Just kidding, he’d rather kill himself, perform ritual seppuku in front of the entire Wambgans family, then spend the rest of eternity in a unique Scandinavian Catholic hell or be sent back to a past life as a 14th century Wambsgans scraping shit and plowing fields. If he did take pity on himself and choose to keep living, he would no longer be media power-player Tom Wambsgans but lowly homosexual divorcee Tom Wambsgans. Either way, he wouldn’t be rich anymore. Well, still rich for St. Paul, but that’s meaningless — it’d be a meaningless, upper-middle-class existence, vacation-home-and-yacht-rental rich, not real rich. Not the sort of person who holds any significance. Who would he be if they took that away from him?

Tom would often think about this on the drive back from Teterboro, watching the neat lines of private planes, all holding different unhappy families, who were, of course, all exactly the same. (He was pretty sure Tolstoy said that.) Then he’d feel simultaneously colossal and insignificant — useless, empty, like an unoccupied McMansion. He was astounded by how immense this feeling was; the coldness almost became sensual, romantic. And then that would frighten him, so he’d make himself keep moving, keep the wheels spinning at all costs. 

When he first dated Shiv, and was lower in the ranks, this wasn’t a problem. To blow off steam, he would sometimes wander into hotels and crash parties, or Instacart Veuve Clicquot by the case, quiet in his recklessness, but reckless nonetheless. He would have distracted, often orgasmless encounters with her, bad sex, morning sex, phone sex, mid-work sexting — this was when they still fucked without aid to begin with. He was no longer bitter about Tinder or vibrators or empty beds or open encounters. The knowledge came with the territory; he could do as he pleased, because Shiv didn’t care, and because Shiv didn’t care, he could do as he pleased. 

Which was why he hated this. It was a betrayal, first of all, and it embarrassed him, but he couldn't stop. 

“I’m just saying that, like, just because it’s a working system doesn’t mean it’s a flawed system. Like — we were both the little guy, once, right? From a business perspective caring about the little guy…it’s not advantageous, but, like, normal people are very…pro little guy. I mean politically.” 

Gregory plays with his cufflink, his face red. It’s late, and Tom’s finally gotten enough drinks in him to get him talking outside the Waystar-Royco bubble. The restaurant is nearly empty. 

“Jesus, Greg, you’re like Tony Kushner without the sense of humor. Don’t you know about the food chain? It’s elementary-school stuff — the big guy, the big shark, is on top, and he eats the little shark. Or he at least tells him what to fucking do until the little shark gets a promotion.”

Actually, Greg understands this power thing better than ever. Generally, he finds, he’s pretty good at guessing people’s basic intentions. What does Tom want from him? That’s easy: someone to feel better than. Guys like him are all the same, really, except Tom actually gets off on feeling superior, in a literal sense, and he throws money around like he has something to prove. And, like everyone else, he watches Greg’s movements carefully, waiting for the first sign of dissent or incompetence. But it runs deeper than that. He can tell he wants to help him. For some reason. For some reason.

“Well,” Greg starts to stammer, his voice thick from the wine, “it makes sense you’d say that, because this stuff — all this stuff makes you —“

“All this stuff makes me what, Greg?” 

“It — clearly it arouses…you."

“Please explain,” Tom says, flatly, trying to hide the fact he’d been nailed down.

“Like the hazing stuff, that time you asked me if I’d kiss you, telling me I’m like, a rube or an idiot or a coke-whore and then buying me these really, uh, lavish meals, then making me feel bad about it, or like, I owe you for everything. This whole thing we’re doing, it’s—“ 

“Greg, you’re being too fucking polite for your own good,” Tom says, throwing back the last of his wine. “Say something mean right now.” 

“Like what?” 

“Don’t get distracted, finish your thought. Try saying what you’re really thinking.” 

“I don’t—“

“Fine, I’ll do it for you. ‘Oh, I’m Greg, uh, I hate capitalism but actively participate in it, oh, God, Logan Roy is my real dad. Oh, God. Kiss me, Tom.’” 

“Okay—“ 

“‘Oh God, Tom, take me home.’ Okay, seriously, I’m getting the bill.” 

* * *

Usually they would do it in his apartment, then Tom would leave, and Greg would lie in bed and smoke a joint. The weed would narrow down the breadth and depth of his emotions, and he wouldn’t have to think as hard about what exactly was going on. Staring out his window at the darkened city, he’d feel almost heroic, like a great literary character, Madame Bovary or Taxi Driver or something, instead of the gay cousin the co-COO was having an affair with. 

The sex was never that good at first, either. Usually it’d just be Tom grinding on him against a wall or a door, breathing in his ear, _Greg you charming fucking ingrate, you greedy little idiot, you mousy little cocksucker_, stuff like that. 

He doesn’t really understand the appeal of the verbal degradation until the night he tries to blackmail Tom. 

But then they're alone in that office, impossibly close. He thinks Tom’s going to strangle him at first, that it’s curtains for Gregory Hirsch. But instead he steps in close, shoulders squared, doing his best to corner him (despite the fact Greg towers over him.) 

“Oh,” he says, his voice practically a growl, resonating in his ears, his chest, “you’re fucking dead, Greg.” 

His stomach drops. And Tom lunges for him and they struggle, crash into a cubicle, make out on a desk, then they realize it’s dangerous, what they’re doing. They hurry downstairs and catch a cab, and as soon as Greg starts to give directions to his loft in Chelsea, Tom cuts in: “No, no, let’s go to a hotel. It’ll be fun, Greg. We’ll get champagne and strawberries. Real husband-and-his-mistress shit.” 

Tom’s hand is directly on his crotch. With the other hand, he's making reservations on his phone.

“Whatever you say,” Greg says, barely a whisper.

At first Greg wonders if this is some advanced tactic, to get him to squeal about the hidden copies, but then he realizes it’s the furthest thing from Tom’s mind. It’s the excitement of the secret, the whiff of betrayal. It’s the fact Tom now knows how far he’s really willing to go. It’s the fact he has no reason to follow Tom — none of this is safe — and yet he does.

The concierge at the hotel barely looks at them; the perks of invisibility, Greg figures. They kiss again in the elevator, then Tom guides him to the room. In the point-five seconds he gets to look around, Greg can tell that this is the nicest suite in the building, the type they give to presidents or Saudi princes or Roys. It has a chandelier and a penthouse view. 

“Look at you,” Tom says. He pins Greg’s wrists behind his back — a classic power move, something Greg actually likes, but Tom just uses it to keep him immobile, hold him hostage with his eyes, which he doesn’t like. It makes him feel flustered and silly, but showing any sign of that means Tom wins. “Fucking Judas.” 

“I don’t know about that,” Greg says, almost laughing. 

“Fucking asshole,” he breathes down his neck. 

“Tom.” He pulls his hands free from his grasp, pushing away.

“What?” Tom asks, impatient but surprised. 

At this point they had barely done anything beyond mutually masturbating. Several times while going at it, Greg had made nonverbal cues expressing interest in sucking Tom’s dick, which were always politely rebuffed. Which was actually quite weird, when he thought about it. Even the most closeted guys Greg had slept with wanted that — but Tom seems averse to any touching at all. 

“I just think that, like, if you’re going to go ahead and do this, you might as well commit? Like, there’s a fine line between touching a person and just sort of talking at them until they, um, orgasm. But how fine is that line really, you know?”

“Just so you know, Greg, I can see through all of your bullshit right now,” Tom says, just to test the waters. Greg’s face stays blank. 

“That’s not what I — Tom, I don’t want you to think that I’m some kind of, like I’m some — I don’t know —“

“We’re not that different.”

“Is that...is that the takeaway?” Greg wrinkles his brow, pulls his face into a wince. “It’s just kind of an old cliche, is all."

“We want the same things, Greg.” Tom grabs his chin and runs his thumb over his mouth, literally wiping the look off his face, forcing him into eye contact. 

Greg swallows, unflappable. “I just — I just don’t know if that’s true.” 

And Tom kisses him, obviously still getting some thrill out of the alpha-bully thing. In reality Tom is the neediest person Greg knows. Greg is needy, too; maybe that’s why they get along so well, bartering in the basic system of need. 

“Have you sucked billionaire cock before?” Tom asks. He’s terrible at dirty talk ninety percent of the time. 

“Uh, actually, no.” 

“Middle-class cock, then,” Tom says, needlessly poking fun. “Milwaukee mall cock. Miller Lite cock." 

“I didn’t drink Miller Lite.” 

“Pride will get you nowhere, my friend.” 

“I kind of preferred Shock Top.” 

“Oh God, please stop talking.” 

_What the fuck am I doing?_ Tom asks himself as he leans against the kitchen island, as he undoes his belt. Greg’s the sick fuck for going along with it, he decides, and leaves it at that. He comes on Greg's wrinkled shirt and finishes him off in the bed, biting his neck, covering his mouth. He knocks back some champagne. Then he takes a shower so hot that he comes out red and steaming.

Afterwards, Tom sends Greg’s clothes to be sponged and pressed. When they get back, his shirt is so flattened, so devoid of any wrinkle, that it looks like it belongs to a ghost, not him. 

* * *

“You screwed me,” Greg says, hyperventilating in the D.C. Four Seasons. “I made a mistake ever fucking trusting you.” 

“Yes,” Tom says, putting on the do-not-disturb sign, “you made a mistake, ever trusting me. Guess what, Greg? I’m still the only one you _can_ trust, because I have some semblance of your best interest in mind.”

“Why — _why _should I believe that?” 

“Because you are convenient to me.”

“And?” 

“And? That’s all you can ask for, Greg.”

Greg just stares. He almost looks like he’s about to burst into tears, until Tom reaches out and puts his arm around him and Greg starts beating on Tom’s back with his fists, not hard enough to hurt, just angry, panicked.

“Greg.” Tom doesn’t let go. He smooths back his hair. He sits him on the bed. He wraps his arms around him and gazes down and says: “Greg, stop thrashing, you goddamn ostrich. Of course I care about you.”

It’s as tender as he’ll ever be. 


	2. Chapter 2

“Should we do this?” Greg asks. “I mean, with everyone in...what, a hundred meter radius?”

“You still have no idea what this family gets up to in close quarters,” Tom says, pouring himself another glass of crisp white wine. “They lack shame, genetically.” 

“I have some idea,” he says, under his breath, sitting back on the guest bed. Greg’s window has a view of the sun-bleached port, bobbing in a bright turquoise strip of water. He’s never seen an ocean this blue. He’s never been on a yacht, never been to the Mediterranean, much less had Mediterranean food beyond a street-cart gyro. But he’s supposed to just play it cool, just assimilate to this lifestyle without any stumbling blocks. He felt less pressure working at the park. 

There’s a fumble, an uncomfortable pause. Tom just examines Greg, in his fucking idiotic bright pink Hilfiger polo and his floppy hair, an intern’s hair, hair that will hopefully keep anyone from taking him seriously for the rest of time. He has no reason to find him remotely attractive right now, but Tom often surprises even himself. He looks serene. What does he know, what advantage does he have that Tom doesn’t? 

Right. Family. Sometimes Tom forgets. You can’t really tell Greg has any Roy in him at all until you get a better look at the curve of the face, the aquiline nose, the dark, slightly cold eyes. It’s like hanging out with a beagle after getting used to the company of wolves. 

Greg opens his mouth to speak, but Tom cuts him off: “Say something mean.” 

He frowns, not in the mood for a challenge. “Why?” 

"Cruelty here is currency. You’re going to have to get better at it.” 

“Your pants are salmon.”

“That’s not mean, that’s an observation.”

“You’re ... a sad and angry person. Your marriage is unhappy. We have this — _thing_ happening but you’re ashamed of it. I mean, I would be, too, if it were me. I mean, I am already, I _am_ ashamed, because it’s really messed up, but—”

“These are fucking facts, Greg! Say something cruel.”

“Fine. Fine. Um. I’m Tom. I am...I am full of hubris.” 

“Uh huh,” he says. 

“Who cares if I fuck everything up, because — because! I’ll just take it out on Greg, because that’s Greg’s job, fuck whatever Greg feels, this is his job, now go fetch.” 

“Warmer. Keep going.”

“Um. I’m Tom. Why don’t I just knock on Greg’s door for some attention, because whatever, uh, holiday yacht sex power hour I had planned with Shiv didn’t work out because — whoops! Another irreversible fuckup. And even if I am totally fucked, it doesn’t matter, because_ Shiiiiv_ will fix everything. And if things do go haywire we can always blame it on Cousin Greg. But I’m Tom, so I can’t even do that right! Who cares, who cares if I leave a trail of moral dissonance and unfaithfulness and jizz in my wake because, that’s my life."

Tom doesn’t speak for a second, then lets out a low whistle. “Jesus, buddy. I thought you didn’t have it in you.”

He pauses. “So do you want to—“

“I don’t know what I want,” Tom says, cradling his glass. 

“What? I thought this was your version of foreplay.”

“Alright, Greg, let’s cool down.” Tom puts just a touch of condescension in his voice, to get back his grip on the situation. (But who’d have thought he’d be capable of a low blow! Greg’s a quick study after all.)

“Fuck off,” Greg mutters. Tom thinks he’s never heard him say that before — but it’s a very Roy thing to do, and he quietly approves. “We’re both getting voted off the metaphorical island, anyway.” 

“Maybe.”

“What — what are we going to do, then, if that happens?” he asks. 

“Suicide pact,” Tom says, half-kidding. Then: “We’re going to be fine, Greg. It’s all one big mind game. The stakes are just that — playing stakes. No matter what happens, I'm still untouchable."

“I mean, if you say so, but this seems serious.”

“They gave me that power and they can’t take it away.” 

“Okay, then, what about me?” 

“What about you, Greg? You’ve thought about it a little, haven’t you?” 

“I mean, sure,” Greg says, through a wince.

“Then you know what they’re saying: that you’re incompetent, a beneficiary of nepotism. They say the same thing about me. That Tom and Rome and Shiv are all incompetent, that all we have in mind are our own best interests. They accuse us of aiding the rise of global fascism."

“Give me some of that wine,” Greg says, after a pause. “Please.”

"I’m not agreeing, it’s just what they say. It’s human nature to point fingers.” Tom pours a slosh into a clean glass and hands it to him. “Now don’t just quaff this. Although you could. Goes down like juice.” 

Greg tastes the wine, trying to savor it. “It’s nice, yeah.” 

“Look at you and your expensive taste.” Tom grins at him. “It’s no Shock Top, I’m sure.” 

“I, uh, I learned from the best,” he says, with an awkward little raise of the glass. Tom toasts him, with just a trace of irony.

“Now. You’re in a unique position because you’re protected, but not that well-protected. Still a liability. You’re like a...Faberge egg in a box full of packing peanuts. You would have been safer if you defected to your grandpa. But you didn’t, because, well, human beings are selfish.” Tom gives him a meaningful look. “But these are things you already know. I am not _helping_ you, Greg. When the bomb hits, we all fucking scatter.”

“I know that.” Sometimes Tom can tell when Greg’s saying the exact opposite of what he means. This is one of those times; he looks like he’s in physical pain. “I didn’t consider anything else.” 

After a second, Tom sits up. “I should get back. I don’t want Shiv asking questions.”

Greg laughs, a little uncomfortable, a little jilted. “I thought you said—”

“Maybe your people lack shame,” Tom says. “But shame is all I have to hide with. Good luck, Greg.” 

He leaves behind the bottle. 

* * *

Back in New York, the world is upended.

Tom doesn’t know what to do. The encounters on the yacht have drained him of all his pride. Months had passed since that night in the hotel, but the memory was still potent as ever. Sex should have been the furthest thing from his mind, but with little else as a compulsion, it filled a great deal of his free time. Occasionally, he looks at porn, but can’t relate to the cast of readily horny, uncomplicated characters, where sex is hardly a transaction, but just choreography, as natural as eating or drinking. Tom wants it in all its raw discomfort, all of its wriggling shame. It makes him feel like he’s part of something primal, something bigger than himself.

When someone buzzes at two in the morning in the pouring rain, Greg knows exactly who it is. He's never just showed up, though — it’s always padded out by several rounds of pretext and teasing, and he’s always followed him in, always with some remark about the tile backsplash or the uber-minimalist furniture in the lobby. This feels different. It feels desperate. 

Tom is still shivering from the bitter wind; his umbrella is turned inside out, his black raincoat dripping. Standing there in the doorway, there is a moment of recognition: _Ah, there you are. The person I most wanted to see._ And then: _Oh, no. _

“Needed to get away from the war room,” he says, and tosses his coat as he pushes past. Greg picks it up and hangs it on the rack. 

“How’s everything?” he asks, realizing how stupid a question it is as he asks it. 

“Don’t.” 

“Are you okay?” 

“Just don’t.”

“Do you — do you want something to drink?” 

“Sure,” Tom says, leaning back on the couch. 

He pours some scotch over ice in a tumbler and gives it to Tom. Greg doesn’t really enjoy the stuff, but it’s the respectable thing to drink, he’s learned, in private situations like these. Tom takes a sip without comment, then loosens his tie. It’s silent for a while. 

“Don’t just stare at me like that,” he snaps, finally. 

“Why can’t I?” 

“Just cut it out, Greg. Come over here. Please.” 

Somehow the act of walking towards him is the most charged thing he’s ever done, and the second he sits down and puts his arm over the back of the couch Tom grabs onto him. Greg reaches for the knot in his tie and holds on for dear life. 

Tom seems angry that he’s here, angry that he’s kissing him, angry he’s taking off Greg’s shirt. He slides his hands down his front, then pulls them away. 

“You know what’s fucked?” he asks, a little short of breath, as they get undressed. "I’ve thought about this before.”

“Thought about what?” Greg says, pulse pounding in his ears. 

“You and me with nothing to lose. What would that be like?” The words themselves are way more intimate, more daring than usual, but the way Tom says them is dark, distracted. He’s gotten used to taking sincere things and spitting them out crassly. 

“How do you mean?”

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t look. Greg kisses him again. Every time before it’s been illicit, violent. This one is gentle, open. Greg the person, not Greg the lackey, Greg the living joke. It’s not just Tom’s perception; he holds himself different, moves his hands different. It’s like they’ve dropped their covers, briefly. 

Greg slips his hand into his underwear. Tom’s head starts spinning; he wonders why he’s terrified. Then he reminds himself he’s fine. Everything is going to be fine. 

* * *

“Lover boy Greg,” Tom scoffs, leafing through the condoms in his drawer.

“Um. Better safe than sorry, I guess.” 

He picks up some kind of bougie lube in a dark blue bottle. Tom pauses, not quite sure what to say. The best he can muster is: “I know you’re okay with this, but are you, like, okay with this?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, definitely.” 

“Good.” He clears his throat. “I want to look at you." 

“Okay,” Greg says, having one of those out-of-body experiences. Tom sits back on the bed, and he follows, climbing into his lap. 

The thing is, by the time they start fucking, the whole thing feels natural. Like this was the obvious conclusion — it was just a matter of time. This is both deeply gutting to learn, and deeply exciting. 

Greg keeps cursing and gasping and jerking, and Tom finds himself coaxing these reactions out of him. 

“_Tom _— oh my God — I’m sorry, it’s just, my fucking — my hip flexors are going to give out —“

“Okay okay just stop,” Tom says, and guides him onto his back, lifting him a bit.

“I’m hyper-mobile—“

“Just stop,” he says, because he’s about to come. He grinds his teeth and buries his head in Greg's shoulder, shaking. His whole body feels heavier when he opens his eyes. He sees Greg trying to finish himself off and pulls his hand away, takes him into his mouth, swallows around him.

He feels insane. Absolutely out of control. 

“Well, Greg? How do you feel?" he hears himself asking. 

Greg is silent, still catching his breath. Tom strokes back his hair, pats him lightly on the cheek. 

“Greg,” Tom says, poisonous but affectionate. “Fuckin’ Greg. I can’t believe it.” Then he collapses, brutally tired, and sleeps curled around him.

Hours later, they both wake up and hazily fuck again, with Greg facedown in a pillow, the sky dark gray through the curtains. Tom means to get up, make a French exit in an Uber, and return home without suspicion, but inertia pulls him back under and he passes out. 

When he wakes up it’s hideously late — only ten, but people will still be wondering where they are — and every muscle in his body aches. Greg is asleep. Tom feels like he’s in a crime scene. 

He showers and goes to the backlit closet and rifles through Greg’s clothes for a clean shirt. He chooses one from Acne Studios made of crisp, textured linen, easily four or five hundred dollars. He’s learned well. 

He forgets his raincoat and umbrella. 


	3. Chapter 3

Shiv’s not an idiot. She’s had suspicions from early on. 

She already knew Tom was into guys. She knew that in college. This had to be a closely guarded secret, they’d both agreed, because not only would he never hear the end of it from her family, particularly Roman, but later on, it had the potential to be highly dangerous PR. What really shocked her, what kept her second-guessing herself, was Greg. 

She remembers when she was ten and Greg was nine and visiting for Christmas, she and her brothers picked on him because he was strange and horribly boring. (She had the cutest little English finishing-school accent as a child, like the Mary Poppins children, except with no Mary Poppins. It went away as she got older and stopped imitating her mom.) 

Eventually things got out of hand and Connor snitched and they all got in trouble. Ewan was livid, Logan was oddly neutral, all the grown-ups were drinking some type of aged scotch that smelled terrible. Maybe there was nothing actually wrong with Greg. Maybe he was just different. She doesn’t remember. 

So at first, she doesn’t understand why Tom would choose _him_. She hardly registers Greg as a person anymore, just another planet in her orbit. He’s gangly, unpoised, awkward in formal situations. He’s common. He’s not interesting to talk to.

Above all, she has always known Tom to be a rational person, within the bursts of passion and self-serving impulses. This doesn’t seem self-serving. It’s a lot of other things that come bundled up with _self_: loathing, destructive, sabotage. 

But she also couldn’t imagine Tom with someone more clever, or more worldly, or more powerful. That’s always been her role to fill. She couldn’t imagine him with someone flamboyant. She couldn’t imagine passion. It would have to have been someone strait-laced and conservative-looking, like Greg is. And most likely, it was someone who wanted something from him, like Greg does. Cold, transactional sex, nothing more. It had to be that. 

It could have been anyone, she thinks. It could have been an intern. It could have been his barber or the dog walker or some random encounter. But no such luck. It has to be her fucking cousin. 

She doesn’t know for sure until he stumbles in around eleven, dark circles around his eyes, missing a coat and wearing a shirt that doesn’t belong to him. Only other men don’t notice things like that.

“Hey,” he says, with that lilt in his voice like he’s about to start apologizing for something, trotting out some excuse or explanation — but he doesn’t. Instead he pours himself a cup of coffee, instantly scalding his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Then he sits at the dining room table, and they read the news in silence. 

* * *

Greg's phone buzzes and he jolts upright, certain he’s slept through an emergency and is in enormous trouble. But it’s just a text from Tom: _Awake? _

It’s almost noon. The sheets are clinging to his skin. He feels like death warmed over. _Yeah thanks_, he shoots back, not sure why he’s thanking him. 

_This whole Ken thing = a shitshow_, says Tom. 

He happens to have unread texts from Ken, which he pretends not to see by not opening. It can wait a few minutes. He throws his sheets in the washer-dryer and brushes his teeth and washes off all the sweat and oil. He drinks some canned cold-brew and smokes half of a joint he finds in his nightstand drawer, and then feels slightly better. 

It was like this when he was younger, too. He would spend weeks building up tension with random guys over instant message. Or he’d go to this guy Cory Albrecht’s basement to watch Mike Meyers and Star Trek tapes and smoke gravity bongs and end up giving each other scared, quiet handjobs, the florescent lights buzzing above them, Cory's mom’s elliptical in the corner. The chase, the unspoken implications, the chess-game of words and movements, was always the main event; the actual deed was a fugue state; the aftermath was a comedown more disappointing than drugs. 

He hates it. 

But slowly, as he settles into a comfortable high and eats his cereal and stares at his phone, he realizes the chase hasn’t abandoned him. Because what is going on, really? There’s this sinful, grimy world he’s created with Tom, and then there’s everything else. And then what?

Greg decides to do what he always does, for now; make small, strategic moves, remaining neutral until he can’t any longer. But if Ken goes rogue and needs help delegitimizing Logan, Greg has an enormous window to screw over almost anyone he likes. He also has an equal chance of making an absolute fool of himself.

And then, when it comes to him and Tom, he has options. Really, when Greg thinks about it, he’s in an advantageous position. It’s not like he wants him to leave Shiv. This could all hypothetically stay a secret. But it’s interesting leverage. Obstruction, destroying evidence, extramarital affair with wife’s cousin. 

No. No, who is he kidding, he’s fucked either way. He has as much a hand in this as Tom does; he holds more power than he thinks. Besides, being Cousin Greg is polarizing enough; being Cousin Greg the snitch would get him garroted. (Not really. But he wouldn’t rule it out.)

What if he went back? What if he had to? There are things he’d miss about being rich: the food and wine, the business-class seats that fit his tall, exhausted body, the apartment. He’d really miss the apartment. He’d miss the collection of things he’d carefully put together and taken care of: his expensive shirts and trousers, his overcoat with the delicate houndstooth print, his black Tumi suitcase, his good cookware and glasses. It was easy to imagine them all disappearing one by one. 

He stands at the window, looking down at the scene on the street below. It’s an overcast Saturday, the sidewalks still wet from the downpour. New York always looks best when it’s gray and miserable out. 

Greg decides he’s better off sitting in the office than sitting around here. He thinks about texting one of the drivers for a ride to the office, but decides it’s not worth it and descends into a crowded L-train platform.

* * *

Tom used to want to topple regimes for Shiv. He used to want to fight her battles. He used to fantasize about being wedded and carrying her over the threshold of some fetching cottage in the south of France. That was their deal. Now he’s the asshole, ever hoping for such a thing. 

The fact that Tom has severed this part of himself — or it’s ceased to appear, really — hasn’t caught up with him yet, and so his impulses are raw. Thinking about the future makes him nauseous. He decides to window-shop online and refresh his news feed instead. Eventually he lands on his texts, one of which Greg never replied to. He texts again: _What about you? Any grand plans? _

Fucking Greg. He still doesn’t believe it. He can’t even begin to process. 

_Not really_, Greg replies, almost instantly. 

_Still thinking about last night_, he starts to type, then deletes, because it’s too sincere. He sets his phone down. 

Seconds later, he gets another text from Greg: _Did you make it back in time? I don’t remember when you left _

_I was fine_, Tom says. They’d been pretty discreet in the past; he’d never slept in Greg’s bed or been out past three in the morning. Why don’t they have rules? People having affairs should set rules. No extended kissing. No borrowing clothes. No favors. No public kindnesses. Keep the trains running on time. 

_I gotta admit_, he adds, _last night was pretty insane._ Even alone in his living room, he shields his phone with one hand as he types. 

* * *

Shiv’s leaving the office, looking for the driver that claims to be idling a few blocks north, off Park. She’s pissed at the driver, because what’s the point of having hired black cars if they don’t magically appear double-parked outside your building with mini water bottles during times of crisis? She’s just shot off a question-mark laden text to them when she spots a distinctly Cousin Greg-shaped person across the street, standing under an awning, typing on his phone.

He looks almost posh, with his overcoat hanging on one shoulder. She saw that coat a while ago, on a mannequin at Barneys. How can he afford to shop at Barneys already? Did Tom take him? He’s the worst about shopping off the rack. Oh God. It’s already worse than she thought. 

“Greg,” she shouts, jaywalking across the street, weaving between cars to join him on the sidewalk. 

“Shiv!” He whirls around, obviously startled. “How are you?” 

“Stop Mr. Ripley-ing around and walk with me.” 

Wow, Greg thinks, a walk and talk — Tom and Shiv must watch too much TV. It means they don’t have to look each other in the eye the whole time, though, so there are some advantages. But does it ever stop with these people? Is it all passionate, high-wire arguments and devastating burns? 

He’s waiting to really hear it this time, to really be torn apart in the anonymity of upper-east Midtown. But instead it’s uncomfortably quiet, besides the sound of traffic. He can’t really keep up; he’s still actively in pain from last night, which he’d prefer not to think about right now. 

Shiv is searching the block ahead for the car, but can’t see anything besides the sea of people shuffling around in their coats. People in this city walk too goddamn slow. As for Greg, she can’t think of a blessed thing she wants to say. It’s risky, blowing her cover now. She refuses to let Greg’s awkwardness rub off on her. 

“You’re a slippery motherfucker, you know,” she finally says, her jaw tight. 

“I — um.” He doesn’t feel as dumb-struck as he usually does. “I try to be pretty transparent, I think. I hope.” 

“Now we both know that’s just not true,” she says, with a smile. “I mean, that’s actually what I admire you for. Most people try to bulldoze their way in. You at least try to be clever about it. You wait your turn.”

“Thanks?" 

“Were you waiting on a car?” she asks, abruptly. 

“No, I was going to take the subway, it’s a little faster, plus I have all these Metrocard swipes—“ 

“You don’t take a car because it’s faster,” says Shiv, "you take a car so you’re not seen.”

“People, um — people don’t really see me.” 

Greg shrugs his shoulders, as if he’s not sure of it himself. Then Shiv finds the SUV on the corner with its hazards on, exhaust clouding in the frigid air. “I better go.” 

She almost offers him a ride, then remembers their homes are in opposite directions.

* * *

Greg decides not to mention the encounter to Tom. He can imagine him panicking, proposing they put the whole thing on hold for a while. He can imagine their world slowly caving in. Besides, they’re talking a lot today, which is strange, because usually Tom strategically ignores him for about twelve to twenty-four hours after they hook up. It was different after last night. It was like they needed to check in on each other, to make sure that the whole thing had been real.

They wear these personas well. Tom the wolf, the wily seducer, Greg the willing understudy. He watches the following texts roll in while he’s in bed, lying on his side: 

_The things I’d do to you._

_I’d go on but I’m not going to in case I have to hear these texts read out loud in a legal deposition someday._

_Good night sweet Greg. May angels sing thee to thy rest_

_Douche prince _

* * *

In the middle of the week, they decide to sneak off to dinner again. This time, a high-society restaurant — the type Tom usually takes him to — feels too dangerous. The media coverage is ramping up, which means more clips of their dumb faces giving testimony show up on TV. They decide on a place right beneath the cool part of Soho and the seedy part of Canal Street, a restaurant in a cellar. The walls and floor are stone, and it’s nearly pitch dark. Everyone there is hip and maybe twenty-four. 

Greg is a ball of nerves from everything that’s going on, and he’s hyper-aware of being seen. They order a bottle of Sardinian wine that is weirdly heavy and tangy; not bad, just not easy drinking. As Tom explains, it’s bad manners to send wine back unless it’s spoiled. 

“And you can tell it’s spoiled, when…?"

“Trust me,” Tom says, “when you know, you know.” 

There’s a lull, as he waits for Greg to say something else. He is busy looking down into his wine glass, dashing in his wool suit coat and thinly-striped tie. He takes a generous sip, wincing a bit. Then he glances back to Tom, waiting for his turn to speak. 

“No work talk,” Tom says, in the mood for setting rules. “Something stimulating. Please."

Greg drinks his sparkling water. “Okay. Like what?” 

“What did baby Greg do, before he came to the big city?"

“Uh. You really want to hear about that?” He smiles uneasily. 

“Shiv neglected to mention you, before you came onto the scene,” Tom says, swishing his wine in the glass. 

“That makes sense. I wasn’t, like, a major presence? I would come over for holidays, mostly. There are photos — I kinda blend into the background, just this like, really tall nine-year-old.” 

“God,” Tom says, laughing a little. “I bet they were fucking vicious children.” 

“A little bit.” Greg laughs along. Then their food comes, and both of them are quietly relieved they don’t have to discuss Shiv. The seafood pasta is impeccably fresh. The wine starts to make sense, go down a little easier. 

“So then what?” 

“I was, uh, kind of a burnout. But an ambitious one. I had friends. No, um. Prospects.” 

“Everybody too weirded out by Cousin Greg?”

“No, just, everyone I knew was either in the closet or an asshole. But as for like — I mean I’m not married — you’re the expert.” Tom just raises his brows, so Greg tacks on: “Obviously, we don’t have to talk about…” 

“No, it’s okay.” Tom sits back, drinking his wine. “Finish the thought.” 

“Like — commitment, and love, and everything — that’s supposed to be rewarding, it’s supposed to feel good.” As he’s talking, he’s realized the wine has gone right to his system.

“It’s not supposed to feel good, Greg,” Tom says, in that exasperated tone. 

“I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to feel _sort_ of good—“

“No. No, trust me. It’s disappointing, and exhausting, and it eats you from the inside out. It is also terrifying. It is life or fucking death, Greg. This is grade-school stuff. Come on.” 

“Oh.” 

“Listen to me,” Tom says, suddenly dead serious. “Maybe it’s all show tunes for some people, maybe for them it’s fine. But not people like us.” 

* * *

Back in the apartment, they switch off the lights and get to his room without any preamble. Greg finds himself lying on his side, shirt still on, belt undone. Tom is sitting above, looking at him, undressing quickly. 

“God,” he says, leaning down, his breath hot on Greg's neck, “I would destroy the fucking system for you, if I could. I would make the two of us look like the only sane people on the boat — I would.” Tom pinches his nipple through his shirt, hard. “I would also sell you out just as quickly.” 

“Um,” Greg breathes, doing a bad job hiding how turned on and confused he is, “okay. Why?”

Tom rolls him onto his back, climbing over him. “Because I know, given the right circumstances, you would do the same thing to me.”

Greg doesn't speak. He feels Tom brush a strand of hair from his forehead, and then he's kissing him, every part of his body burning. There's nothing terrifying about it at all. 


	4. Chapter 4

It all makes sense. 

Her memory is gimlet. She sees her husband and Greg skulking around at the breakfast buffet in England, huddled at the table like they’d done something terrible. The way Greg’s tastes and mannerisms seemed to morph overnight. Greg on the boat, trying to look like he belonged there. The way Tom would look, occasionally, in moments of silence; eyes blank, already checked out.

It is very easy to get on his laptop in the middle of the night. She finds credit card statements and email receipts for thousand-dollar meals and hotel room stays, in-room dining and minifridge charges of champagne and condoms. iMessage lurks below, with sixty-odd unread texts. The top few, already open, are from Greg. She doesn’t want to read them. She reads them. 

They’re off in their own little world while her world is crumbling. That’s expected. What startles her is the sheer joylessness with which he’s doing it. When it was them, it was like they were getting away with something. It was like she was indoctrinating him into a new, secret world, and they were bucking tradition together. It was high romance. He was unusually cunning, and knew how to be cruel, but wasn’t brutish. He cleaned up well, looked good in a tuxedo. He took her to the theater and the opera, even though she had little interest in either. He could mostly hold a conversation with her father. He was more than game to endure her brothers’ frat-house rituals. He’d wanted to marry her so badly, talked about it so often, that it was almost a little creepy. 

At the top of the statements, there’s an absurd tab from Armani, which is when she really goes ballistic. He probably talks big game to Greg about the private lives of the wealthy and then goes and tries his suits on in a perfumed Fifth Avenue changing room with some nauseating shopgirl — or boy, for that matter — running back and forth, getting him different sizes, sticking his card in a chip reader. 

They have a personal shopper. That’s who hems his pants and fits his shirts. But Tom will still turn up every few weeks or so with something like cufflinks, or a sweater wrapped in noisy tissue paper. It’s an affectation he won’t drop, as inherent to his character as liking quail or pinot noir or referencing _Four Weddings and a Funeral. _

Maybe she should have guessed about him earlier, going by his mania for fashion and total lack of good taste in it. Clothing should always be armor, she thought, not a weakness or a giveaway. Shiv, who had grown up having a stylist, couldn’t wrap her head around it; after all, Tom adjusted to the other hired help with no problem. But he didn’t grow up with people that cleaned and cooked and laid new clothes on his bed for him, and probably still saw it all as a strange luxury. 

She would have been happy to thrash out the rest of their days together, a comfortable tyranny, one doing as they pleased, the other quietly resenting them for it. Plenty of couples are unhappy. That wasn't the issue. The fact they no longer loved each other was not the issue, either. The problem was that he had squandered all the things she’d given to him. He was no longer grateful. 

She’d fucked up before. She knew that. But for all her fuckups, there was nothing this egregious, nothing this potentially dangerous to the family. Nothing she’d done felt this low or personal or cruel. 

For about half an hour, she wants to _Gone Girl_ him. Or maybe it’d be easier to kill them both. She can’t decide. Maybe she should wait until she has everyone distracted, then stab them both in the front. Then that would be her entire life for the rest of time. What a relief. It’d be the only time Jezebel or Twitter would lend her any sympathy. But then again, this family isn't smart enough to get away with murder. She knows her limitations.

She’s already kicking herself a little for not keeping calm around Greg. She knows he’s not stupid. She just has a bad habit of showing her hand. As a child, she would sometimes tell on herself. She scrubs the history, restores the pages to the same place and order, and returns the laptop to the couch.

* * *

If Shiv knows, then they’ve hit a wall. Soon it will stop being a secret: Tom imagines the tabloids, the blogs, the tweet fodder. If he doesn’t own up, there’s no way she’ll keep it to herself. If he folds, she could technically hold it over him for the rest of time. She’s been holding things over him as long as they’d known each other. 

That’s not fair. It was always their understanding that she was protecting him, from his overbearing parents and her rancorous family. His job in exchange was more or less to stand there, clutching her arm, and look handsome, or stupid, depending on context. He owed her for this, and clearly made her feel good. It gave their relationship a clearer-defined purpose. 

What are his options? It would never be as simple as just leaving her; he’d be excommunicated. He’d have to get a divorce lawyer (what if he and Shiv both went for the same one?) and be systematically stripped of all titles, all corporate privileges, their vacation properties, his hypoallergenic dog. Wedding gifts — bone china, French linens. Things he bought on her dollar. Debts to be paid.

Then he’d have nothing at all. It would just be him and Greg, and what a sordid idea that is, the two of them, the last people left on Earth for each other.

He imagines the horrible tepid conversation: “Let’s get out of here, let’s go somewhere.” “Where?” “I don’t know. Anywhere.” “We can’t go anywhere, we don’t belong anywhere, we shouldn't be seen anywhere.” And so on. (He doesn’t know who’s saying what. They hardly sound like things they’d say.) 

Or: “Don’t blame yourself, Greg, this is my fault. We can’t do this anymore. This never should have happened. We should just pretend it didn’t, and carry it to our graves.” Again, it doesn’t sound like him. He doesn’t know how to navigate things like this. It’s all so enormous, and he’s just Tom.

For a while, he paces around the empty apartment listlessly, unsure what he even wants next. Then he finds Mondale and gets down on the floor and buries his face in his woolly neck and allows himself to sob, quiet and contained, for about a minute; Mondale just sits there, panting and smiling, stupidly. Then he gets up and lint-rolls the dog fur off his suit. 

Finally, he gets his overnight bag, gets into a car, and picks up Greg from his loft around eight, sending him an innocuous text asking to meet. It’s not snowing, but not exactly raining, either; slush descends from above and coats the streets, slowing traffic to a halt. The brake lights of the cars wash everything in red.

They’re sitting there in the back of the SUV, with the heat blasting, and for whatever reason staring straight ahead at the closed partition. Finally, Greg turns his head and looks at him. 

“Does Shiv know?”

(That’s the thing with Greg. He acts slow, but he’s quick — scarily quick.) 

“We haven’t exactly been careful lately,” Tom blurts. “And Shiv and I are — it’s just — it’s not a good look for either of us right now, alright, Greg?” 

“I know that you two are, um, open,” Greg says, with tightrope carefulness, “but, would it be possible for there to be some mutual leverage? About who she might have…” 

Tom’s face slackens a little, incredulous. “That’s not how this works.”

Actually, that is how this works, but he can’t deal with Greg strategizing right now; he can feel him sorting out the different options in his mind, figuring how to get out with his nose clean. Tom wants to throttle him. 

“So what are we supposed to do, then?” Greg asks, clearly agitated. "And — where the hell are we going?” 

Then he looks out the window and realizes they’re uptown, in that same row of hotels Tom took him to before. “Why are we here?” 

Tom shrugs. “I’m going to stay here, for a while.” 

“Oh.”

“Just for now. To avoid the fallout, with Shiv.” 

“Okay.” Divorce hotel, Greg thinks. 

They both get out of the car. It’s freezing out. Greg hurries behind him, ducking through the revolving door, and for a second, it’s exciting being back here, getting away with something they shouldn’t. 

They're already checked in, Tom explains, so they go straight to the elevator without another word. Greg follows him inside, hovering at the entryway. Finally, he gets a good look at the room; chandelier, marble counters, thick white carpet, pale green false-damask wallpaper. 

It’s all a little less dazzling without half a bottle of wine in his system, but he can fix that soon. In the parlor there’s a cream-colored fainting couch that looks like it's out of a Victorian painting, between leather chairs and a flat-screen TV; the bed is tucked away in the other room. 

On the wall is what looks like a Rothko, for some reason. 

The room is so, so, not to the Roys’ taste, which is austere and icy and dark, almost modest in its brutalism. This room is bright and decadent and screams _New York old money_. It feels like Tom. Or whatever it is Tom wants to be. He doesn’t know.

There’s a bottle of twist-off red and a fruit basket from the management. Greg pours himself a glass; Tom puts his bag away in the bedroom, then stands there, giving him a loaded glance. 

“I brought you here to talk.” 

“So this is just a business meeting,” Greg says, an edge in his voice. 

“It was always going to end up like this, Greg."

“Yes, I get it, we’re sick miserable people and we deserve whatever happens. But can we, like, put a pin in that for now and actually talk about what’s going on?” 

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Tom asks. 

“‘I care about you.’ You said that.”

“So what if I—“

“That’s what you said. ”

“This isn’t my fault, Greg,” Tom spits out before he can think, “this is absolutely not my fault. If I hadn’t seen you, and taken fucking pity, and tried to help you—" 

“If you hadn’t — look, just, don’t do this, okay? This isn’t fair. I have followed you through…way too much for you to just, write it off like it’s…it’s…” 

“It’s not fair? ‘It’s not fair,’ Greg? None of this is fair. Our people don’t play fair.” 

“Who are ‘our people?’ What does that actually mean? Because we’re not really — we’re not —“ 

(Greg pauses. It’s not that they’re not Roys, because _he’s_ a Roy, and he’s supposed to be prepared at any moment to leave Tom in the dust, as agreed upon. Right.)

“—maybe what I’m trying to say is, yes, there’s _our people_, but there’s also _us people,_ like the two of us, we can’t pretend we haven’t—“

“Come on, Greg, this is pathetic.” 

He sighs. “I can tell that you’re—“

“Fight back.” 

“I don’t want to. I want you to talk to me.” He sucks in a breath, then says: “Maybe that’s the problem, you can’t talk to me, not unless it’s some kind of _game_, that’s what all of this is, a mind game, but you’re not good at it, Tom. You fucked it up. Why am I here? Why am I even here?”

“I don’t know.” 

“Why? A sane person would have said, leave me the hell alone. A sane person would make threats.”

“You’ve already made threats, Greg.” 

“If something had happened _once_ and we never brought it up again — that would have been normal. Stuff like this happens all the time. But we’re not normal. You’re not normal.” Suddenly Greg is in his face, his voice raised. “When you first looked at me. I knew. And I knew how stupid — how fucking _stupid_ it was_—_” 

Tom’s standing there, in his shirtsleeves, leaned against the desk. It gives Greg chills down his body to look at him, face open, defeated, nothing to lose. 

Then it becomes a total blur, a montage of things he’s feeling with his eyes closed; his body bumping into Tom the edge of the desk cutting into his leg Tom grabbing a handful of his hair. He hears a belt clinking, someone breathing raggedly, and the sound alone makes Greg's blood boil, hating Tom for doing this to him, hating himself for being dragged in. 

He pins back Tom’s wrists. The sip of wine he’d had is still burning in his palette as he kisses him, tasting of rust. Tom is unsubtly hard against his thigh, kissing him feverishly, getting a great thrill out of this, too.

“So — is this actually what you want?” Greg asks, cringing at the sound of his own voice. “Or are you scared?"

Tom spits in his general direction, which is confusing at first, before Greg realizes it’s supposed to be some type of dom thing which just annoys him all the more. So he slaps him, which he instantly feels bad about, and he almost wants to apologize, but then Tom grabs onto him and suddenly they’re knocking around, nearly upending a lamp, tangling on the bed. 

“Poor Greg,” he whispers, gripping his hand, unable to look away. “Poor Greg. I broke you. How does it feel fucking your greatest fuckup?” 

“Honestly? Not good.” 

“That’s the spirit.” 

Greg is surprised at how brutal the whole thing feels, how truly unsatisfied he is. For a second afterwards, he rests his head on Tom’s shoulder, catching his breath. 

“Poor Greg,” Tom says, again. 

“You don’t know anything about me, you know,” Greg says, realizing it’s a little late to be defensive. 

Tom just scoffs. “I know exactly who you are.” 

Then Greg gets up and stumbles to the bathroom, leaning on the tile wall, wondering if he’s going to be sick. He recovers, eats some fruit, and stares out at the park through the penthouse window, snow settling on top of the tightly-cut box of forest. If Tom's still awake by the time he leaves, he doesn't say anything. 


	5. Chapter 5

An uncomfortably short amount of time later — like, months, at best — Greg sees Tom at a bar and pretends that he doesn't. 

He is choosier now. Gone is the ashtray full of tiny roaches hidden in his nightstand. He exclusively vapes wax from a two-hundred dollar pen. He understands twelve-year Scotch and the menu at Nobu. He has people to clean his house, buy his clothes. Occasionally he calls his mom. He’s just moved from the loft to a brownstone in an arty but non-threatening neighborhood. He winds up in places like this, full of people his age, people trying to have some stake in running the world, many of whom grew up a lot like him. He can’t relate to them at all. 

People notice him. Being seen and being noticed, he’s learned, are two entirely different things. 

He never actually means to end up in these situations. Grindr exists, but the thrill isn’t the same, and he doesn’t like the unpredictability, the unpolished seductions, the threat of miscommunication (or over-communication.) He’s abstained from social drinking, because he’s terrified of running his mouth. The only real indulgence he had was food; private dinners, good produce, good wine. 

He’s actually waiting to be seated in the restaurant when he sees Tom come through the door. At first he stays collected. It could always be someone who looked exactly like him. It had happened dozens of times before; he’d be on the street and think he saw the back of Tom’s head, and he’d panic, and then realize it couldn’t be him before he even got a good look at the face. Just another man with the same overcoat. Different features gave it away — the out-of-place earpiece or scarf, the wrong shaped hands. But he looks again just to make sure, pretending to be fascinated by the wine racks.

Tom is staring right at him. What irritates Greg is that he looks exactly the same, when he feels like an entirely different person. He doesn’t know the details of the divorce, or anything else going on in his life, and doesn’t want to. He does know that Tom is a coward and a bully and he fucking hates him and everything else he feels is tightly compartmentalized, neatly packed away. 

He’s already prepared everything else he wants to tell him. And yet the second he approaches him all Greg can think of is: “Uh, hey, Tom."

“Hey yourself.” Tom gives him that pained, manic smile. "What’s up, big shot? How the fuck are you?”

“I’m okay.”

“Yeah? Life treating you alright? Family’s good?” 

Tom is not drunk, but he might as well be — he’s experiencing the sort of misery that feels like a blackout, low-stakes and heightened at the same time. He’s mortified being around Greg again. Every time he sees him he looks slicker, prettier. Tom looks like a ghost. 

“Well?” he asks. “I’ll take that as a no.” 

Greg licks his lips, still struggling with his words. “Do you ever look at a piece of furniture, or something, and it looks nice, but then you see there are like, all these threads sticking out? All the rough parts?”

“I’m shutting down this analogy,” Tom says. “Let me get you a drink.”

“I’m waiting for a table.” 

“Dinner for one?” Tom raises a brow, maybe impressed. “Can I join?” 

“I don’t really want to do this.” 

“I’ll buy.” 

“Is that — is that really wise?"

It’s a lame, awkward barb, but it still hurts. “Jesus, Greg. I’m fine. They didn’t throw me in the poorhouse, I just—"

“No, I mean, is it wise, for us to be doing this at all.”

“Well, no, but that hasn’t stopped you before.” 

* * *

That first night in the hotel, Greg laid on his back in the bed, clouded by the white comforter, and listened to the shower in the other room. It had finally happened. A white terry robe lay on the bed, its sash neatly knotted. He cleaned himself up, put it on, went to the corner where his clothes lay in a heap, and found his one-hitter in his trouser pocket. 

As he tried to discreetly smoke, he stared out the window, at the faintly lit park. The trees were just beginning to turn brown; fat black birds settled on the branches, then jumped off and flew overhead. 

The water shut off, and Tom came out shortly after, lingering behind him at the window. “Give me some of that,” he said, taking the pipe from between his fingers. Greg, too dazed to reply, watched Tom inhale, light catching in his hollowed cheeks. 

The strawberries arrived. Tom sent their clothes away. They ate them in bed with the rest of the champagne. Everything felt glossy and nauseatingly sweet. Greg thought the room seemed alien from the world they lived in, but couldn’t put his finger on why. 

They watched the news blankly. Finally the shirts came back, hanging in white garment bags. Tom unzipped his and got dressed.

“You can sleep here, if you want,” he said, “but I’m going.” 

But they kissed again briefly before he left, Tom standing over him in bed, and it was strange, like he was his husband, or something, and Greg had trouble getting it out of his head for hours after. He remembers it again that night in the bar. It never quite escapes him. 

* * *

Greg doesn’t know what changes his mind. It’s not pity. It’s not out of the same impulse as the botched hate-fuck. But he agrees to eat with him anyway. The host seems pissed off, but finds them a corner table, out of sight. They sit there, 

“We’re separated,” Tom blurts, avoiding Shiv’s name. “At least until — we’re waiting for a more advantageous time to sort things out.” 

“Okay?”

“I’m just saying. In case you’re worried about that.” 

“Do you miss...?” Greg starts to ask, genuinely curious.

“Being the fucking chew toy? No. That’s on you now.” 

“I guess.” 

“You’ve seen the worst of it,” Tom says. “Most people — they don’t let people treat them the way they treat you. Us.”

“I guess.”

“Most people wait until the right moment and then they take their ice cold fucking revenge. Most smart people, at least." 

“Are you — is this advice or a threat?”

“I don’t know,” Tom says, and he really doesn’t. They order wine. They talk the way they always do, Greg notices. Tom acts like he’s in _My Fair Lady_ and Greg tries to behave like a regular person. They eat an unmemorable dinner. After a while, they struggle with what to talk about; the veneer is broken, somehow, and outside of the regular banter, everything feels raw. 

“Do you miss any of it?” Greg asks, again, a little gentler, when they’re waiting for the check. 

“Do you miss me?” he shoots back. 

“Honestly, I’m not sure yet.”

“I like to think I got you here,” Tom says, and it stuns Greg so much he doesn’t speak until he’s signed the bill and gotten away from the table. 

“You can’t do anything without acting this way, you know,” Greg says, waiting at the coat-check. Something has sharpened his anger to a fine point. “You have to call me names. You had to mock me before you helped me, you had to do it to get yourself hard, you — you’re a cruel person, and you don’t really have to be cruel, that’s not the way the world works, that’s just something people like you made up. Something you do to make yourself feel better. So you can feel control.” 

“I only do that to you,” Tom says, flatly. 

“Well I don’t — I don’t fucking _like_ it,” he snaps.

“I’m sorry.” 

“No.” Greg goes to the door, tightening his scarf. “I’m really sick of _this,_ this same thing we do.” 

“Yeah, keep talking on your pedestal, Greg, like you’re not hustling,” he says, loud and lilting, as they exit to the sidewalk. 

“I’m not—“

“Oh, no, _you_ of all people are a fucking swindler, my friend. You act helpless to make yourself look better, then the second they’re not looking — you calculate. Yesterday it was safe to be around me. Now it’s not. Because you’re Greg. That’s your life." 

“You don’t deserve to be happy,” Greg spits.

And Tom just laughs, and laughs, because: “No one _deserves_ to be happy, Greg.” 

Greg doesn’t say anything. Above them, there’s the dull roar of traffic, colors from LED signs, a panopticon of office windows. Nothing feels romantic about this place anymore. He misses snow-covered fields, big empty roads. Clean winter smell, instead of metal and cigarettes and gasoline. He feels boxed in. 

“You’re wearing my raincoat,” Tom observes, quietly.

“I am.” 

There was no reason why, Greg thought. He’d just needed a raincoat. It was a little short in the sleeves, but it fit well and shut out the cold. 

“Come with me,” Tom says. “Let’s just talk.” 

“Okay.” Greg reaches for his own temple, rubs at the bridge of his nose with one finger heavily, having trouble processing. “Yeah. Fine.” 

Tom almost starts looking for a cab, but then sees Greg’s beelining for the driver waiting up the street. Tom climbs next to him in the back and gives directions to his new place, obviously deeply relieved. They ride in silence. 

It was all exactly to Tom’s taste — large glass doors, white stone facade. The doorman wore a very old-school hat and overcoat, and the lobby had an enormous display of white gladioli on the center table, looking like a vase full of icicles. The elevator mirrors were framed in delicately carved gold. The apartment was even more cliché — open concept, exposed wood. He wondered if he paid someone to choose each item of bachelor-pad furniture or if he picked out everything himself. 

“So?” Tom asks. 

He must have decent enough credit to lease this place — or maybe this is squirreled-away Roy property, divorce accommodations. Greg shrugs. “It’s nice.” 

(It was trying hard to be incredibly classy, which only highlighted its classlessness. That’s what Greg liked about his own new place. It had character, but not obnoxiously so.)

“Do you want some…tea, or something?” Tom asks, snapping him out of it. 

“You drink tea?” Greg's a little surprised. 

“I don’t know, Greg, I’m just trying to be polite.” 

As Greg hangs up his things, Mondale, who seems more pent-up and shaggy, jumps onto his knee to greet him. (He's glad to see him, too. He misses his mom’s dog more than most people.) 

Tom turns on a kettle and leans against his stainless-steel island, and squints heavily over his next words. “I wanted to tell you, in privacy, that you’re going to be okay.” 

It takes him a second to understand what he might mean. “With — like with Shiv?”

“Like with Shiv. Or anybody. For now.”

“Okay,” Greg says, sitting on the edge of the couch. “What about you?"

“Oh, who cares.” The gas clicks, and Tom reaches over to adjust the stove. “Nobody actually wants our lives ruined, you know, unless we go out of the way to ruin them ourselves." 

“Um. I guess.” 

“You got what you wanted,” Tom says, with a lopsided smile. “You’re moving up. So I guess now I was your mistress. Always kind of saw it the other way around.” 

And when he smiles at him it ignites something he’d stuffed down, and Greg _does_ miss him then, misses his laugh and sharp eye and his hand in the crook of his arm. The kettle screeches. 

* * *

“It doesn’t mean anything, Shiv. It’d be like if you were sleeping with the interior decorator — it’s purely a power thing."

“It doesn’t sound like a power thing. It sounds like you.” 

* * *

“You should be relieved,” says Tom. “You’re staying out of the bloodshed for now.” 

He pours them both tea. Greg stares down into the delicate-looking cup and shrugs.

“What am I supposed to do now?” 

“What do you mean, what are you supposed to do? You shouldn’t be worrying about that right now. The world’s your oyster.”

“I’m actually allergic to oysters,” Greg says, gently deflecting. "And most shellfish."

“Okay, then I don’t know, the world is yours to firmly grip by the balls.”

“Do I want that?” 

“You’d be stupid not to take it.” 

They drink their tea, not speaking. Finally, Tom stands, and sits near him on the couch, keeping a respectable distance. 

“I do miss you,” Tom says. “But in an ugly way.”

Greg swallows. “I do too.” 

“It wasn’t always ugly. Sometimes we were sweet to one another.” 

“Sometimes.” 

“I always knew there was something else,” Tom says. 

“Like what?” 

“Something else between us. And I knew I wasn’t crazy, because you kept going to bed with me. Why else would we end up here again and again?"

“I don’t know.” 

“What _are_ you going to do now?” Tom asks, quietly.

Greg shakes his head,before he moves impulsively and kisses him. First it seems pained, confused, but then it softens. Tom can’t think, can’t process sensations besides the heat in his face and Greg's arms. He’s in his arms, right now. He is losing his mind. Greg undresses them both. It’s absurd how quickly it happens, really. Like old times. Next thing he knows he's sucking him off, letting Tom stroke his hair and cradle his head, and then he’s quickly being guided to the Tom's room like it’s the worst apartment tour in the world. 

In the closet connected to the bathroom, Greg finds his old shirt he thought went missing; he recognizes it by the tag and the fact it’s slightly longer than the rest of Tom’s shirts. He runs a hand over the sleeve. He feels Tom behind him, his lips on his shoulder, the back of his neck. He spots the two of them in the walk-in mirror, two bodies connecting, and feels embarrassed and exhilarated. 

They fuck in his futon-height bed, the shades already drawn. Tom forgets to completely dim the lights, and in a way, forces Greg to look at what he’s doing, all the uncomfortable glances and sounds and sweat. Tom keeps his head down, and because he can’t help himself, he tells him: “This was all supposed to happen, Greg, we’re supposed to, we’re —” 

“Stop,” Greg whispers over him, about to collapse. 

Maybe Tom is right, and they don’t deserve anything. Maybe they deserve this. 


End file.
